It started as a baby. We suspected an allergy to dairy, so we tried soy formula. Mild fussiness turned to hours of screaming. We went back to milk formula. (We later found out that all dairy is a problem)

We tried her on soy again when we began feeding her solids. Same reaction! She screamed herself to sleep. We waited until she was a toddler and tried again. This time she went wild. She held her hand in the flame of a candle until we could get to her and pull it out. It took her several hours before she even realized that she had hurt herself.

As she grew older we found that we could tell within 30 minutes of when she had accidentally gotten soy. She would become uncontrollable. We found the best way to get her through was to get her to bed and asleep before it kicked in, or take her to the park to run it off. Once in school we started seeing it affect her school work. This past Christmas we pulled her out of piano lessons because she was so high on soy that she had been sneaking from a number of different sources. We have since closed these sources.

We thought she would grow out of it, but it has not happened. All testing shows soy as not an allergy though.

I've never tested allergic to soy either, but when I was little an ingestion of a small amount of soy protein would result in immediate projectile vomiting + hives in my throat. It's odd that I didn't react to soy on my tests, but I react to peas which is a slightly milder allergy.

Also, when I was a child I didn't react to the test for dogs, but I was definitely allergic! I've tested allergic to dogs since.

Those allergy tests are not 100% reliable. Did your granddaughter have just a scratch test or a blood test as well?

Last edited by Helen on Sun Feb 03, 2008 11:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Rainbowp,
Possible it's a bad intolerance as opposed to true allergy. But I wonder - did the allergist give her skin tests to the actual food as well as to the serum?
I've got adult onset soy allergy, and while I appeared to be borderline allergic on the initial skin test, when the allergist had me bring in a bag full of actual soy products and he skin-tested with those, there was no question. I had wheals up and down my arm. It would probably be good to know - as true soy-allergy is as serious as peanut or any of the other biggies.
Good luck with it.. /Gwen

My granddaughter was tested first at age 6 months for dairy, soy, and barley. We had seen a reaction to all of these prior to 6 months of age. All came out negative which made it very hard in the court room to include food allergies in her father's visitation order. She came home screaming for hours.

We waited until she was in grade two before we took her for more skin tests. We had a list of half a dozen foods that we had seen some reaction to, either by rash or vomiting. The only suspect food that did not test positive was soy, but she also tested positive on a few other foods that we did not expect. From my experiences with my allergies progessing over the years, we are not taking any chances.

Right after the skin tests, I insisted on taking her for blood tests as well. The soy did not show up on that one either, but soy has repeatedly shown us how it can alter her behaviour, even in the past few months. (I finally had to ban granola bars from any shelf lower than 6 ft. off the floor.) The blood tests showed a very long list of allergies/sensitivities. Since taking her off of all of those foods she has had a lot fewer sick days from school.

Now that she is nearing the end of grade three we are trying some foods on her again. So far we have put beef, citrus fruit and coconut back in her allowed in moderation list. We were trying sunflowers this month but she started reacting to pollens so we had to put a hold on trying foods until Birch season is over.

As for actually touching soy products, I hadn't thought of that. So many inks (including newspaper inks) are made from soy. We have avoided soy crayons because she used to eat all her crayons. I do know that when others in our house use soy products she begins to react after a few weeks. I figured that it had something to do with cross contamination via the dishwater. I have started getting rid of all plastic dishes to reduce the possibility of this. The glass rinses cleaner than plastic.

I'm not sure how reliable those blood tests are. I think I read somewhere that the skin tests are more reliable for detecting the allergy---but that might be because some people develop antibodies to particular foods without developing an allergy. (On this topic I've been wondering whether a person who has developed allergen-specific antibodies but is not allergic is more likely to develop an allergy?)

I would guess that the concentration of the antibodies might have something to do with the severity of the allergy, but that there is no definitive scale. When I got a blood test for wheat, the allergist seemed to think there was a correlation between the amount of wheat antibodies and the severity of the allergy, but he didn't tell me how allergic I was either---just that I shouldn't eat any wheat anymore. I don't think there's any way of telling for sure--and allergies can suddenly get better or worse without warning.

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